Chapter from Healing Plants of the Bible
Barley
Hordeum vulgare
Graminaceae
Exodus 9:31 and the flax and their barley was mitten; for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was boiled.
Leviticus: 27:16 an homer of barley seed shall be valued at fifty shekels of silver.
Numbers 5:15 then shall the man bring his wife unto the priest, and he shall bring her offering for her, the tenth of an ephah of barley meal.
Deuteronomy 8:8 A land of wheat, barley , and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates.
Judges 7:13 Behold, I dreamed a dream, and, lo, a cake of barley bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent, and smote it that if fell..
Ruth 1:22 and they came to Bethlehem in the beginning of barley harvest
Ruth 2:17 so she gleaned in the field until even, and beat out what she had gleaned,and it was about an ephah of barley , so she kept fast by the maidens of boaz to glean unto the end of barley harvest and of wheat harvest and dwelt with her mother in law
Ruth 3:2 and 15-17 Behold,he winnoweth barley to night in the threshing floor, and when she held it, he measured six measures of barley, and laid I on her, these six measures of barely gave he me,
II Samuel 14:30 see, Job’s field is near mine, and he hath barley there.
I Kings 4:28 barley also and straw for the horses and dromedaries brought they unto the place where the officers were
II Kings 4:42 and there came a man..and brought the man of god bread of the first fruits, twenty loaves of barley , and full ears of corn in the husk thereof
Job 31:40 Let thistles grow instead of wheat and cockle instead of barley
Ecclesiastes 11:1 cast they bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days
Ezekiel 13:19 take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley , and beans, and lentils and millet, and tiches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, and thou shall eat it as barley cakes
Hosea 3:2 So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an homer of barley , and an half homer of barley
John 6:9 and 13 There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes
Revelation 6:6 A measure of wheat for a penny and three measures of barley
Barley, or seorah in Hebrew, is mentioned 45 times in the Bible! There are not many plants that get mentioned that many times. Bearing in mind arrugula got one mention, its importance to the Israelites becomes quite clear. Barley was one of the first grains to be cultivated and was a staple throughout much of the ancient world. How ancient are we talking? It was first cultivated sometime around the year 8000 BC. It is native to Southwest Asia where its wild ancestor still grows.
In Deuteronomy 8:8 we read that God has given the Israelites a good land that was filled with seven plants that would sustain them. The seven plants include barley, wheat, grapes, figs, olives, pomegranates, and honey. These plants were seen as a blessing from God and a measure of his love for the Israelites. They were seen as the staples of life and all that one needed to stay well and alive.
Early in biblical life barley was the staple of all the people. In Leviticus 27:16 we read that the value of a piece of land was determined by how much barley could be planted on it. In the period when Judges was happening the people survived on barley. The men in King David’s army lived on barley as their primary source of food.(II Samuel 17:28) When Solomon was building his temple, house, and houses for his wives, the work force was fed a regular diet of barley.
Barley’s spread from Southwest Asia all the way to Israel is the just the beginning of this amazing plants history. In fact, its cultivation had spread from Asia to Africa and from the North Pole to the tropics before the biblical period. The reason it spread the world over as a food source is linked to the plants versatility. It can tolerate short summers of the north as well as long dry ones in the south. Where ever it is planted, it produces abundantly.Early human civilization was all about utility. Barley grew and produced food under most circumstances and for this reason its cultivation spread far and wide.
Later in the Biblical period, barley was considered inferior to wheat. During the later biblical period it was seen as poor people food, wheat being the preferred grain of the wealthy. It cost half the price of wheat. (I Kings 7:1) Though barley was less popular, it was more widely grown. History reveals it was used to feed cattle,horses,asses, and catch this, poor people. It was so associated with animals that when a women committed adultery her sin offering was a pile of barley. (Leviticus 5:15). The reason for this offering, according to the Talmud, was that as the woman had behaved like an animal, it was fitting that her sin offering be the food of animals!
Barley was an important food source throughout the Mediterranean region and there are many mentions of it by the cultures bordering the Mediterranean Sea. The ancient Egyptians said that the goddess Isis told man how to grow it and it was one of their staples. It was grown by the Egyptians at the time they invented writing and it is recorded amongst the crops in the fifth, seventh, and seventeenth dynasties.(2440 BC,1800 BC, 1680 BC.) In 450 BC Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians were master brewers and barley was the base material used to make the bubbly beverage beer.
The barley harvest in Israel takes place in April and in February in Egypt. In Exodus 9:22-25, a hail storm destroys the Pharaohs barley crop but not the wheat. (Wheat ripens a minimum of a month later than barley.) This hail storm took place in approximately 1941 BC. From hints like this we know both the Israelites and the Egyptians depended on the crop. During the Biblical era three barley ears laid end to end created an inch.
As you read the Bible its reputation as poverty food eventually surfaces. Let’s just say the Bible refers to it in a less than flattering manner at times. The plants in the Bible are often symbols, this plant was the symbol of poverty and worthlessness. It was a common plant and people who ate it were seen as equally common. Throughout the Holy land, barley is seen in the same light. The Bedouins refer to their enemies as barley cakes, which is presumably just a cut above calling them cow pies. In Judges 7:13-15, Gideon who was raised poor, is referred to as a “cake of barley bread” by the rather uptown Midianites. People really knew how to toss an insult in those days.
If you want to understand the Bible you really must know a bit about the plants mentioned in it. As an example, in Numbers 5:15 you find the Israelites making offerings to God of a little barley flour. Knowing what you now know about barley, you know that such an offering was a major insult to the Heavenly Father. If you didn’t know anything about barley, the insult would have slipped right on by. Learning about the plants of the Bible gives you the opportunity to learn about how people lived in the ancient world and enriches the Bible reading experience.
Wealthy people used barley to feed their animals, the poor on the other hand did a lot of things with it. They made bread, porridge, added it to soups, and steamed the green sheaths with milk. The cells of the human body use sugar as energy. They need a constant supply of sugar to stay alive. Barley is rich in starch. Starches are long strings of sugars bound one to the next like pearls in a necklace. When you swallow barley, enzymes in the stomach pick these sugars off the starch chains one by one and ship them to the hungry cells. People can survive eating nothing but starch rich food and the poor in the Biblical period did just that.
Unlike the Israelites, the Greeks always considered it a sacred grain.It was used in sacrifices and in the great festival held every year at Eleusis in honour of the gods and goddesses of agriculture. Barley came to Greece via Egypt and Sophocles and Dioscorides mentioned it. Pliny calls the grain “antiquissimum frumentum”, or the most ancient grain. The Romans were with the Israelites and thought it a common grain. When it comes to making bread, barley is a wall flower compared to wheat.
Early on people realized that though it did not make the tastiest bake goods, it did make a pleasant intoxicating beverage. The Israelites made beer with barley and in fact made three sorts of beer. One was made with just barley, another was made with barley, figs, and blackberries. A third type was made with barley, safflower, and salt. This last variety of beer was called “Egyptian Zyphos” and in theory the recipe came down from Egypt. Beer is an ancient, ancient beverage. Though it is not mentioned in the Bible directly, it is mentioned in the Talmud.
Pliny, Aristotle, Strabo, and Diodorus discuss beer made of barley. Xenophon, writing in 450 BC talks of the Armenians making beer. Diodorus Siculus says the natives of Galatia made beer. Tacitus said the Germans were already making barley beer as early as 100 AD. You don’t hear that much about barley in the modern world, apart from its use in beer making.
Barley is used to produce malt which is in turn used to produce beer and whisky. What is malt and how do you make it? To make malt, barley grains are placed in water and allowed to sprout. Once the seeds have sprouted the barley is “malt”. The reason barley is malted is to do with making alcohol. Yeast eats sugar and their waste product is alcohol. Barley in the dry state is starch rich and sugar poor. Starch is not the preferred food of the alcohol producing yeasts. In the sprouting process, the seed converts its starches into sugars. Malt is essentially raw sugar just waiting to meet Mr.Yeast. Once it meets Mr.Yeast, in the presence of water, you have alcohol. The malt can be toasted before it is fermented and this alters the flavour of the beer.
Barley was seen as a common grain and beer the beverage of the common man. People have always liked to get drunk and this desire for temporary oblivion made beer popular. However, this was only part of the reason people made beer. Beer was food. You may know that beer is loaded with calories. Grains can mould, be eaten by insects, or sprout. Making beer was a way of storing food for consumption at a later date. Living in England, I can tell you that poor people still use beer as their main source of food.
Apart from its use in brewing, barley is largely forgotten. It is still used in soups made in the winter to strengthen a person against the cold. Even in “Plant Ignorant America”, people know that if you are sick, barley soup will make you stronger. Oddly enough, if you ask people about barley, they seem to know is a strengthening food. Barley is a source of energy the body needs but it also has healing powers beyond this.
Maimonides, the famous Ninth century Jewish Physician, had a lot to say about barley, “Gruel of barley which is well cooked is the best of all foods for the production of good chyme, and for the preservation of health. It is a food which is no less nourishing than the nutritive value of good bread. Barley gruel contains a cleansing power. If one wishes to increase its strength, then one should mix some pepper therein. One does not need to add anything that has a drying effect thereto unless one intends to cleanse the sides of the chest and the lung. In barley we find a cooling force for the inflamed ye it is consumed in the form of bread, or gruel, or roasted kernels. Even if one doesn’t remove the outer shell, the gruel made there from is still useful for its cleansing effect which cannot be attained in any other manner. Barley gruel invigorates body strength and purifies the respiratory passages of bad liquids by dissolution and liquefaction. These beneficial effects accrue from no other form of therapy ”
In China, the land from whence it came, barley is seen as a nourishing food, able to prevent and reduce fevers. It is said to impart vigour and strength to those that eat it. The Chinese go out on the limb and say that if you eat it for a long period of time your hair will not turn grey. They grind the grain and apply the flour to slow healing ulcers, burns, and wounds to get healing under way. The Chinese say it is reconstructive, able to rebuild a shattered constitution.
Gerard tells us that while wheat is heating, barley is cooling and building. He states that the grain is so building that in the days of Hippocrates, Xenophon, and Cyrus, parched barley was boiled with water to produce a drink that was fed to soldiers. In his day it was used to reduce temperatures in infectious conditions.
In a book entitled “Eugenics”, written by T.W.Shannon, a rather interesting statement can be found, “Diet is of the greatest importance in the treatment of all forms of diseases. In some diseases it takes precedence of even the treatment by drugs.” You will be amused to note that the book was written in 1914. We moderns think we are so clever to have discovered that diet makes a difference! One forgotten classic used to strengthen the health and to bring it back when misplaced is a beverage known as barley water. Barley water was used during acute feverish illnesses to bring down the temperature. It was also recommended for use in the convalescent period. Mr. Shannon was so kind as to give a recipe for barley water which I will now pass on.
“Wash an ounce of pearl barley in cold water three or four times, or boil it for a few minutes. Then place the washed barley in a pint and a half of water, with a bit of lemon peel and a bit of sugar. Allow it to simmer, stirring constantly, until it is of a nice thickness; then strain it and add lemon juice. If a slight flavour of lemon is preferred with very little acid, put a slice of lemon with the barley in the water; sweeten to taste. Care must be taken not to make the drink too sweet, as it will then clog the palate and produce flatulence.”
Barley water was the mainstay of the sickroom from the time of the Bible until the turn of this century. Uncontrolled high temperatures used to kill people and at a minimum cook their brains. Barley is a cooling grain and was used to drop the temperatures of people in the fits of fever. Because it is so strengthening, it is perfect for a person trying to get past an illness or recover from one once it has moved on. Take note and advantage of this tool for the modern sick room.
There is more to barley and the joke may have been on the wealthy of the world for putting down barley eating! It has been proven that people who have a diet based on barley do not suffer from heart disease to the extent that their wheat eating neighbours do. At first glance one might think the reason for this is that wealthy people tend to eat a diet rich in meat, butter and other fatty foods. This is not the case. Barley has a cardiovascular protecting power and the people that eat it on a regular basis are less likely to develop heart disease.
High serum or blood cholesterol is considered to be a risk factor in developing heart disease. Much medical attention has been dedicated to discovering ways to lower cholesterol in the aim of reducing heart disease. Early in the war on heart disease researchers discovered that some people that stop eating high fat diets still had high serum cholesterol levels. The implication is that some people, regardless of what they eat, will have high cholesterol. A lot of people ate loads of rabbit food and still flunked their cholesterol tests!
The liver is responsible for producing cholesterol. Because the diet angle did not make a huge difference in peoples cholesterol levels, research was directed towards reducing the livers production of cholesterol. Enter barley. Barley has been proven to slow the livers production of cholesterol. So for those people that seem to over produce cholesterol, barley is the answer.
In the ancient world, barley had uses that went beyond dropping the temperature and making the body generally stronger. Gerard recommended it for a variety of ills that are to this day treated with the grain. Gerard saw it as a diuretic and recommended it to get the kidneys pumping out urine, “Barley, saith Dioscorides, doth cleanse, provoke urine, breedeth windiness,and is an enemie to the stomacke.”
Stuart Fitzsimmons had similar things to say about it in 1996. This modern Herbalist agreed that it was diuretic, but went on to say it is excellent in urinary infections. “Barley water is an excellent urinary demulcent. It will relieve the discomfort of cystitis, urethritis, prostatitis. All lower urinary tract infections are helped with barley tea. The tea is a soothing, mild diuretic. It is simple to make. Add one cup of barley to four cups of water, boil until the barley starts softening. Once the grains are a bit soft, strain out the barely and save the water. Once it is cool, add honey and lemon juice to taste. One cup of this three times a day while a urinary infection is active will make a difference.”
Joe Nasr, Lebanese herbalist, agrees that barley is diuretic and says that in traditional Lebanese medicine it is used to treat a urinary problem common in hot climates. “Barley tea is used as a diuretic, the seed boiled in water until it softens, and drunk straight up. In the Middle East practitioners see a huge amount of patients with kidney stones. Kidney stones are more common in dry hot climates as increased sweating leads to concentrated urine, which favors the precipitation of urinary stones. People use this tea to avoid getting stones as it keeps the urine flowing and stones don’t get the chance to form.”
Gerard also talks about using the barley product, beer, as medicine. “Boyle strong ale till it come to the thickenesse of hony, or the forme of an unguent or salve,which is applied to the paines of the sinewes and joints, as having the propertie to abate aches and paines.” Beer was cooked down to an ointment and this was applied over painful joints and muscles. Gerard is not the only person to say barley is a nice arthritis treatment.
Dr.Christopher Hansard tells use the following about barley’s use in Tibetan medicine, “barley is one of the great tonic herbs used in Tibet. It is roasted, used in tea and made into all kinds of foods. Tibetans feel the use of barley improves the gut and creates physical strength in the body. It is excellent topically applied in bruising,aches and pains, particularly from repetitive strain injuries. The porridge made of boiled barley is applied to the aching part of the body and massaged into the skin in an anti-clockwise circular movement. Barley flour can be added to the bath as a relaxation treatment.”
Barley was also used as a topical healing agent for the skin. It was used especially in cases of boils, infected wounds, and swellings. Gerard mentions this, “Barley meale, boyled in an honied water with figges, taketh away inflammations, with pitch, rosin, pigeons dung, it softneth and ripeneth hard swellings.”
Gerard also says the ointment made from boiling down beer quickly heals old ulcers and new wounds. Joe Nasr told me that in Lebanon barley tea was also used in skin healing. “The decoction made of barley boiled in water is used to wash the face reduce blemishes, acne, and especially blemishes left by the sun” Barely paste applied to the skin is one of the oldest beauty treatments going and the price is right!
Barley has so many medicinal applications no household should be without a bag in the pantry. Unlike some herbal medicines, barley could not be cheaper. As you pass through the dried grain section at the grocery store, the price will jump out at you as being incredibly affordable. Any of the uses mentioned are reasonable starting points for its use and it could not be safer. It might be the food of peasants, but, the peasants were the people that had the hard work to do. Eating foods like barley, one can see how they were able to survive unending hardship!